Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!
Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour
Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power
Latona's son a dire contagion spread,
And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead;
The king of men his reverent priest defied,
And for the king's offence the people died.

SPEAK, MEMORY— Of the cunning hero,The wanderer, blown off course time and againAfter he plundered Troy's sacred heights.

nbsp; SpeakOf all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, The suffering deep in his heart at sea As he struggled to survive and bring his men homeBut could not save them, hard as he tried—The fools—destroyed by their own recklessnessWhen they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,And that god snuffed out their day of return.

Of these things,

Speak, Immortal One,And tell the tale once more in our time.

By now, all the others who had fought at Troy—At least those who had survived the war and the sea— Were safely back home. Only OdysseusStill longed to return to his home and his wife.The nymph Calypso, a powerful goddess—And beautiful—was clinging to himIn her caverns and yearned to possess him.

Arms and the man I sing, who, forced by fate
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore;
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latin realm and built the destined town,
His banished gods restored to rights divine,
And settled sure succession in his line;
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate,—
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?
Against the Tiber's mouth, but far away,
An ancient town was seated on the sea,—
A Tyrian colony; the people made
Stout for the war, and studious of their trade:
Carthage the name; belov'd by Juno more
Than her own Argos, or the Samian shore.
Here stood her chariot; here, if Heav'n were kind,
The seat of awful empire she design'd.
Yet she had heard an ancient rumor fly,
(Long cited by the people of the sky,)
That times to come should see the Trojan race
Her Carthage ruin, and her tow'rs deface;
Nor thus confin'd, the yoke of sov'reign sway
Should on the necks of all the nations lay.
She ponder'd this, and fear'd it was in fate;
Nor could forget the war she wag'd of late
For conqu'ring Greece against the Trojan state.
Besides, long causes working in her mind,
And secret seeds of envy, lay behind;
Deep graven in her heart the doom remain'd
Of partial Paris, and her form disdain'd;
The grace bestow'd on ravish'd Ganymed,
Electra's glories, and her injur'd bed.
Each was a cause alone; and all combin'd
To kindle vengeance in her haughty mind.
For this, far distant from the Latian coast
She drove the remnants of the Trojan host;
And sev'n long years th' unhappy wand'ring train
Were toss'd by storms, and scatter'd thro' the main.
Such time, such toil, requir'd the Roman name,
Such length of labor for so vast a frame.
Now scarce the Trojan fleet with sails and oars
Had left behind the fair Sicilian shores,
Entering with cheerful shouts the watery reign,
And plowing frothy furrows in the main,
When, laboring still, with endless discontent
The Queen of Heaven did thus her fury vent:—
"Then am I vanquished? must I yield?" said she,
"And must the Trojans reign in Italy?"
So Fate will have it, and Jove adds his force;
Nor can my power divert their happy course.
Could angry Pallas, with revengeful spleen,
The Grecian navy burn and drown the men?
She, for the fault of one offending foe,
The bolts of Jove himself presumed to throw;
With whirlwinds from beneath she tossed the ship
And bare exposed the bosom of the deep:
Then, as an eagle gripes the trembling game,
The wretch , yet hissing with her father's flame,
She strongly seized, and with a burning wound,
Transfixed and naked, on a rock she bound.
But I, who walked in awful state above,
The majesty of heaven, the sister-wife of Jove,
For length of years my fruitless force employ
Against the thin remains of ruined Troy.
What nations now to Juno's power will pray,
Or offerings on my slighted altars lay?"

If more than once, as annals tell,Through blood without compunction spilt,An egotist arch rule has snatched,And stamped the seizure with his sabre’s hilt, And, legalised by lawyers, stood;Shall the good heart whose patriot fireLeaps to a deed of startling note,Do it, then flinch? Shall good in weak expire? Needs goodness lack the evil grit,That stares down censorship and ban,And dumbfounds saintlier ones with this—God’s will avouched in each successful man? Or, put it, where dread stress inspires A virtue beyond man’s standard rate,Seems virtue there a strain forbid-Transcendence such as shares transgression’s fate? If so, and wan eclipse ensue,Yet glory await emergence won,Is that high Providence, or Chance?And proved it which with thee, Timoleon? O, crowned with laurel twined with thorn,Not rash thy life’s cross-tide I stem,But reck the problem rolled in pangAnd reach and dare to touch thy garment’s hem.

II

When Argos and Cleone stroveAgainst free Corinth’s claim or right,Two brothers battled for her well:A footman one, and one a mounted knight. Apart in place, each braved the bruntTill the rash cavalryman, alone,Was wrecked against the enemy’s files,His bayard crippled and he maimed and thrown. Timoleon, at Timophanes’ need,Makes for the rescue through the fray,Covers him with his shield, and takesThe darts and furious odds and fights at bay; Till, wrought to pallor of passion dumb, Stark terrors of death around he throws, Warding his brother from the fieldSpite failing friends dispersed and rallying foes. Here might he rest, in claim rest here,Rest, and a Phidian form remain;But life halts never, life must on,And take with term prolonged some scar or stain. Yes, life must on. And latent germsTime’s seasons wake in mead and man;And brothers, playfellows in youth,Develop into variance wide in span.

III

Timophanes was his mother’s pride—Her pride, her pet, even all to herWho slackly on Timoleon looked:Scarce he (she mused) may proud affection stir. He saved my darling, gossips tell:If so, ’twas service, yea, and fair;But instinct ruled and duty bade,In service such, a henchman e’en might share. When boys they were I helped the bent;I made the junior feel his place,Subserve the senior, love him, too;And sooth he does, and that’s his saving grace. But me the meek one never can serve,Not he, he lacks the quality keenTo make the mother through the sonAn envied dame of power, a social queen. But thou, my first-born, thou art IIn sex translated; joyed, I scanMy features, mine, expressed in thee;Thou art what I would be were I a man. My brave Timophanes, ’tis thouWho yet the world’s forefront shalt win,For thine the urgent resolute way,Self pushing panoplied self through thick and thin. Nor here maternal insight erred:Forsworn, with heart that did not winceAt slaying men who kept their vows,Her darling strides to power, and reigns—a Prince.

IV

Because of just heart and humane,Profound the hate Timoleon knewFor crimes of pride and men-of-preyAnd impious deeds that perjurous upstarts do; And Corinth loved he, and in wayOld Scotia’s clansman loved his clan,Devotion one with ties how dearAnd passion that late to make the rescue ran. But crime and kin—the terrorised town,The silent, acquiescent mother—Revulsion racks the filial heart,The loyal son, the patriot true, the brother. In evil visions of the nightHe sees the lictors of the gods, Giant ministers of righteousness,Their fasces threatened by the Furies’ rods. But undeterred he wills to act,Resolved thereon though Ate rise;He heeds the voice whose mandate calls,Or seems to call, peremptory from the skies.

V

Nor less but by approaches mild,And trying each prudential art,The just one first advances himIn parley with a flushed intemperate heart. The brother first he seeks—alone,And pleads; but is with laughter met;Then comes he, in accord with two,And these adjure the tyrant and beset; Whose merriment gives place to rage:“Go,” stamping, “what to me is Right?I am the Wrong, and lo, I reign,And testily intolerant too in might”: And glooms on his mute brother pale,Who goes aside; with muffled faceHe sobs the predetermined word,And Right in Corinth reassumes its place.

VI

But on his robe, ah, whose the blood?And craven ones their eyes avert,And heavy is a mother’s ban,And dismal faces of the fools can hurt. The whispering-gallery of the world,Where each breathed slur runs wheeling wide.Eddies a false perverted truth,Inveterate turning still on fratricide. The time was Plato’s. Wandering lightsConfirmed the atheist’s standing star;As now, no sanction Virtue knewFor deeds that on prescriptive morals jar. Reaction took misgiving’s tone,Infecting conscience, till betrayedTo doubt the irrevocable doomHerself had authorised when undismayed. Within perturbed Timoleon hereSuch deeps were bared as when the sea,Convulsed, vacates its shoreward bed,And Nature’s last reserves show nakedly. He falters, and from Hades’ glensBy night insidious tones implore—Why suffer? hither come and beWhat Phocion is who feeleth man no more. But, won from that, his mood electsTo live—to live in wilding place;For years self-outcast, he but meetsIn shades his playfellow’s reproachful face. Estranged through one transcendent deedFrom common membership in mart,In severance he is like a headPale after battle trunkless found apart.

VII

But flood-tide comes though long the ebb,Nor patience bides with passion long;Like sightless orbs his thoughts are rolledArraigning heaven as compromised in wrong: “To second causes why appeal?Vain parleying here with fellow clods.To you, Arch Principals, I rearMy quarrel, for this quarrel is with gods. “Shall just men long to quit your world?It is aspersion of your reign; Your marbles in the temple stand—Yourselves as stony and invoked in vain?”Ah, bear with one quite overborne,Olympians, if he chide ye now;Magnanimous be even though he railAnd hard against ye set the bleaching brow.— “ If conscience doubt, she’ll next recant.What basis then? O, tell at last,Are earnest natures staggering hereBut fatherless shadows from no substance cast? “Yea, are ye, gods? Then ye, ’tis yeShould show what touch of tie ye may,Since ye, too, if not wrung are wrongedBy grievous misconceptions of your sway. “But deign, some little sign be given-Low thunder in your tranquil skies;Me reassure, nor let me beLike a lone dog that for a master cries.”

VIII

Men’s moods, as frames, must yield to years,And turns the world in fickle ways;Corinth recalls Timoleon—ay,And plumes him forth, but yet with schooling phrase. On Sicily’s fields, through arduous wars,A peace he won whose rainbow spannedThe isle redeemed; and he was hailedDeliverer of that fair colonial land. And Corinth clapt: Absolved, and more!Justice in long arrears is thine:Not slayer of thy brother, no,But saviour of the state, Jove’s soldier, man divine. Eager for thee thy City waits:Return! with bays we dress your door.But he, the Isle’s loved guest, reposed,And never for Corinth left the adopted shore.

If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss—
But then 't would spoil much good philosophy.
One system eats another up, and this
Much as old Saturn ate his progeny;
For when his pious consort gave him stones
In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones.
But System doth reverse the Titan's breakfast,
And eats her parents, albeit the digestion
Is difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast,
After due search, your faith to any question?
Look back o'er ages, ere unto the stake fast
You bind yourself, and call some mode the best one.
Nothing more true than not to trust your senses;
And yet what are your other evidences?
For me, I know nought; nothing I deny,
Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you,
Except perhaps that you were born to die?
And both may after all turn out untrue.
An age may come, Font of Eternity,
When nothing shall be either old or new.
Death, so call'd, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep.
A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
The very Suicide that pays his debt
At once without instalments (an old way
Of paying debts, which creditors regret)
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,
Less from disgust of life than dread of death.
'T is round him, near him, here, there, every where;
And there 's a courage which grows out of fear,
Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare
The worst to know it:—when the mountains rear
Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there
You look down o'er the precipice, and drear
The gulf of rock yawns,—you can't gaze a minute
Without an awful wish to plunge within it.
'T is true, you don't—but, pale and struck with terror,
Retire: but look into your past impression!
And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror
Of your own thoughts, in all their self-confession,
The lurking bias, be it truth or error,
To the unknown; a secret prepossession,
To plunge with all your fears—but where? You know not,
And that's the reason why you do—or do not.
But what 's this to the purpose? you will say.
Gent. reader, nothing; a mere speculation,
For which my sole excuse is—'t is my way;
Sometimes with and sometimes without occasion
I write what 's uppermost, without delay:
This narrative is not meant for narration,
But a mere airy and fantastic basis,
To build up common things with common places.
You know, or don't know, that great Bacon saith,
'Fling up a straw, 't will show the way the wind blows;'
And such a straw, borne on by human breath,
Is poesy, according as the mind glows;
A paper kite which flies 'twixt life and death,
A shadow which the onward soul behind throws:
And mine 's a bubble, not blown up for praise,
But just to play with, as an infant plays.
The world is all before me—or behind;
For I have seen a portion of that same,
And quite enough for me to keep in mind;—
Of passions, too, I have proved enough to blame,
To the great pleasure of our friends, mankind,
Who like to mix some slight alloy with fame;
For I was rather famous in my time,
Until I fairly knock'd it up with rhyme.
I have brought this world about my ears, and eke
The other; that 's to say, the clergy, who
Upon my head have bid their thunders break
In pious libels by no means a few.
And yet I can't help scribbling once a week,
Tiring old readers, nor discovering new.
In youth I wrote because my mind was full,
And now because I feel it growing dull.
But 'why then publish?'—There are no rewards
Of fame or profit when the world grows weary.
I ask in turn,—Why do you play at cards?
Why drink? Why read?—To make some hour less dreary.
It occupies me to turn back regards
On what I 've seen or ponder'd, sad or cheery;
And what I write I cast upon the stream,
To swim or sink—I have had at least my dream.
I think that were I certain of success,
I hardly could compose another line:
So long I 've battled either more or less,
That no defeat can drive me from the Nine.
This feeling 't is not easy to express,
And yet 't is not affected, I opine.
In play, there are two pleasures for your choosing—
The one is winning, and the other losing.
Besides, my Muse by no means deals in fiction:
She gathers a repertory of facts,
Of course with some reserve and slight restriction,
But mostly sings of human things and acts—
And that 's one cause she meets with contradiction;
For too much truth, at first sight, ne'er attracts;
And were her object only what 's call'd glory,
With more ease too she 'd tell a different story.
Love, war, a tempest—surely there 's variety;
Also a seasoning slight of lucubration;
A bird's-eye view, too, of that wild, Society;
A slight glance thrown on men of every station.
If you have nought else, here 's at least satiety
Both in performance and in preparation;
And though these lines should only line portmanteaus,
Trade will be all the better for these Cantos.
The portion of this world which I at present
Have taken up to fill the following sermon,
Is one of which there 's no description recent.
The reason why is easy to determine:
Although it seems both prominent and pleasant,
There is a sameness in its gems and ermine,
A dull and family likeness through all ages,
Of no great promise for poetic pages.
With much to excite, there 's little to exalt;
Nothing that speaks to all men and all times;
A sort of varnish over every fault;
A kind of common-place, even in their crimes;
Factitious passions, wit without much salt,
A want of that true nature which sublimes
Whate'er it shows with truth; a smooth monotony
Of character, in those at least who have got any.
Sometimes, indeed, like soldiers off parade,
They break their ranks and gladly leave the drill;
But then the roll-call draws them back afraid,
And they must be or seem what they were: still
Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade;
But when of the first sight you have had your fill,
It palls—at least it did so upon me,
This paradise of pleasure and ennui.
When we have made our love, and gamed our gaming,
Drest, voted, shone, and, may be, something more;
With dandies dined; heard senators declaiming;
Seen beauties brought to market by the score,
Sad rakes to sadder husbands chastely taming;
There 's little left but to be bored or bore.
Witness those 'ci-devant jeunes hommes' who stem
The stream, nor leave the world which leaveth them.
'T is said—indeed a general complaint—
That no one has succeeded in describing
The monde, exactly as they ought to paint:
Some say, that authors only snatch, by bribing
The porter, some slight scandals strange and quaint,
To furnish matter for their moral gibing;
And that their books have but one style in common—
My lady's prattle, filter'd through her woman.
But this can't well be true, just now; for writers
Are grown of the beau monde a part potential:
I 've seen them balance even the scale with fighters,
Especially when young, for that 's essential.
Why do their sketches fail them as inditers
Of what they deem themselves most consequential,
The real portrait of the highest tribe?
'T is that, in fact, there 's little to describe.
'Haud ignara loquor;' these are Nugae, 'quarum
Pars parva fui,' but still art and part.
Now I could much more easily sketch a harem,
A battle, wreck, or history of the heart,
Than these things; and besides, I wish to spare 'em,
For reasons which I choose to keep apart.
'Vetabo Cereris sacrum qui vulgarit—'
Which means that vulgar people must not share it.
And therefore what I throw off is ideal—
Lower'd, leaven'd, like a history of freemasons;
Which bears the same relation to the real,
As Captain Parry's voyage may do to Jason's.
The grand arcanum 's not for men to see all;
My music has some mystic diapasons;
And there is much which could not be appreciated
In any manner by the uninitiated.
Alas! worlds fall—and woman, since she fell'd
The world (as, since that history less polite
Than true, hath been a creed so strictly held)
Has not yet given up the practice quite.
Poor thing of usages! coerced, compell'd,
Victim when wrong, and martyr oft when right,
Condemn'd to child-bed, as men for their sins
Have shaving too entail'd upon their chins,—
A daily plague, which in the aggregate
May average on the whole with parturition.
But as to women, who can penetrate
The real sufferings of their she condition?
Man's very sympathy with their estate
Has much of selfishness, and more suspicion.
Their love, their virtue, beauty, education,
But form good housekeepers, to breed a nation.
All this were very well, and can't be better;
But even this is difficult, Heaven knows,
So many troubles from her birth beset her,
Such small distinction between friends and foes,
The gilding wears so soon from off her fetter,
That—but ask any woman if she'd choose
(Take her at thirty, that is) to have been
Female or male? a schoolboy or a queen?
'Petticoat influence' is a great reproach,
Which even those who obey would fain be thought
To fly from, as from hungry pikes a roach;
But since beneath it upon earth we are brought,
By various joltings of life's hackney coach,
I for one venerate a petticoat—
A garment of a mystical sublimity,
No matter whether russet, silk, or dimity.
Much I respect, and much I have adored,
In my young days, that chaste and goodly veil,
Which holds a treasure, like a miser's hoard,
And more attracts by all it doth conceal—
A golden scabbard on a Damasque sword,
A loving letter with a mystic seal,
A cure for grief—for what can ever rankle
Before a petticoat and peeping ankle?
And when upon a silent, sullen day,
With a sirocco, for example, blowing,
When even the sea looks dim with all its spray,
And sulkily the river's ripple 's flowing,
And the sky shows that very ancient gray,
The sober, sad antithesis to glowing,—
'T is pleasant, if then any thing is pleasant,
To catch a glimpse even of a pretty peasant.
We left our heroes and our heroines
In that fair clime which don't depend on climate,
Quite independent of the Zodiac's signs,
Though certainly more difficult to rhyme at,
Because the sun, and stars, and aught that shines,
Mountains, and all we can be most sublime at,
Are there oft dull and dreary as a dun—
Whether a sky's or tradesman's is all one.
An in-door life is less poetical;
And out-of-door hath showers, and mists, and sleet,
With which I could not brew a pastoral.
But be it as it may, a bard must meet
All difficulties, whether great or small,
To spoil his undertaking or complete,
And work away like spirit upon matter,
Embarrass'd somewhat both with fire and water.

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour.
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's-head;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and at the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the heards, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?"
And he in heavy speech:
"Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe's ingle.
Going down the long ladder unguarded,
I fell against the buttress,
Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows."
And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
"A second time? why? man of ill star,
Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
For soothsay."
And I stepped back,
And he stong with the blood, said then: "Odysseus
Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
Lose all companions." And then Anticlea came.
Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.
And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away
And unto Circe.
Venerandam,
In the Creatan's phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi, with golden
Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that:

Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.

Middle Passage:
voyage through death
to life upon these shores.

“10 April 1800—
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves.
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.”

“8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick
with fear, but writing eases fear a little
since still my eyes can see these words take shape
upon the page & so I write, as one
would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding,
but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune
follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning
tutelary gods). Which one of us
has killed an albatross? A plague among
our blacks—Ophthalmia: blindness—& we
have jettisoned the blind to no avail.
It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads.
Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes
& there is blindness in the fo’c’sle
& we must sail 3 weeks before we come
to port.”

What port awaits us, Davy Jones’ or home? I’ve heard of slavers drifting, drifting, playthings of wind and storm and chance, their crews gone blind, the jungle hatred crawling up on deck.

Thou Who Walked On Galilee

“Deponent further sayeth The Bella J
left the Guinea Coast
with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd
for the barracoons of Florida:

“That there was hardly room ’tween-decks for half
the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;
that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh
and sucked the blood:

“That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:

“That when the Bo’s’n piped all hands, the flames
spreading from starboard already were beyond
control, the negroes howling and their chains
entangled with the flames:

“That the burning blacks could not be reached,
that the Crew abandoned ship,
leaving their shrieking negresses behind,
that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:

“Further Deponent sayeth not.”

Pilot Oh Pilot Me

II

Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories,
Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar;
have watched the artful mongos baiting traps
of war wherein the victor and the vanquished

Were caught as prizes for our barracoons.
Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity
and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,
Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us.

And there was one—King Anthracite we named him—
fetish face beneath French parasols
of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth
whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:

He’d honor us with drum and feast and conjo
and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,
and for tin crowns that shone with paste,
red calico and German-silver trinkets

Would have the drums talk war and send
his warriors to burn the sleeping villages
and kill the sick and old and lead the young
in coffles to our factories.

Twenty years a trader, twenty years,
for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested
from those black fields, and I’d be trading still
but for the fevers melting down my bones.

III

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
their bright ironical names
like jests of kindness on a murderer’s mouth;
plough through thrashing glister toward
fata morgana’s lucent melting shore,
weave toward New World littorals that are
mirage and myth and actual shore.

Voyage through death,
voyage whose chartings are unlove.

A charnel stench, effluvium of living death
spreads outward from the hold,
where the living and the dead, the horribly dying,
lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.

But, oh, the living look at you with human eyes whose suffering accuses you, whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark to strike you like a leper’s claw.

You cannot stare that hatred down or chain the fear that stalks the watches and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath; cannot kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will.

“But for the storm that flung up barriers
of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores,
would have reached the port of Príncipe in two,
three days at most; but for the storm we should
have been prepared for what befell.
Swift as the puma’s leap it came. There was
that interval of moonless calm filled only
with the water’s and the rigging’s usual sounds,
then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries
and they had fallen on us with machete
and marlinspike. It was as though the very
air, the night itself were striking us.
Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,
we were no match for them. Our men went down
before the murderous Africans. Our loyal
Celestino ran from below with gun
and lantern and I saw, before the cane-
knife’s wounding flash, Cinquez,
that surly brute who calls himself a prince,
directing, urging on the ghastly work.
He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then
he turned on me. The decks were slippery
when daylight finally came. It sickens me
to think of what I saw, of how these apes
threw overboard the butchered bodies of
our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam.
Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told:
Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us
you see to steer the ship to Africa,
and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea
voyaged east by day and west by night,
deceiving them, hoping for rescue,
prisoners on our own vessel, till
at length we drifted to the shores of this
your land, America, where we were freed
from our unspeakable misery. Now we
demand, good sirs, the extradition of
Cinquez and his accomplices to La
Havana. And it distresses us to know
there are so many here who seem inclined
to justify the mutiny of these blacks.
We find it paradoxical indeed
that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty
are rooted in the labor of your slaves
should suffer the august John Quincy Adams
to speak with so much passion of the right
of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters
and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero’s
garland for Cinquez. I tell you that
we are determined to return to Cuba
with our slaves and there see justice done. Cinquez—
or let us say ‘the Prince’—Cinquez shall die.”

The deep immortal human wish,
the timeless will:

Cinquez its deathless primaveral image,
life that transfigures many lives.

Fray was the name where we cameto next. Might've been a place,might not've been a place butwe were there, came to it soonerthan we could se... Come toso soon, it was a name we stuckpins in hoping we'd stay. Straywas all we ended up with. Sparwas another name we heard itwent by... Rasp we also heard it wascalled... Came to it soonerthan we could see but soon enoughsaw we were there. Some who'dcome before us called it Bray...

Sound's own principality it was, apocket of air flexed mouthlike,meaning's mime and regret, a squib ofsomething said, so intent itseemed. At our backs a blown conch,bamboo flute, trapic remnant, LoneCoast reconnoiter come up emptybut for that, a first, forgottenwarble trafficked in again even so, themango seed's reminder sent to whatend we'd eventually see...

We hadCome thru there before we weretold. Others claiming to be us hadcome thru... The ubiquitous two laybound in cloth come down from on high,hoping it so, twist of their raiment steep

integument, emollient feel for whatmight not have been there. Head in theclouds he'd have said of himself, she'dhave said elsewhere, his to be above andbelow, not know or say, hers to bealibi, elegy otherwise known...

have said elsernrheren

Above and below, limbo what fabricintervened. Limbo the bending they movedin between. Limbo the book of thebent knee... Antiphonal threadattended by thread. Keening stringby thrum, inwardness, netherness... Violinstrings tied their hair high, limbothe headrags they wore... The admissionof cloth that it was cover, whatwas imminent out of reach, given whatwent for real, unreal,